“Who is he really, this new saint, this Voice of the People? Oddly enough we've heard him say nothing about things of urgent concern. Nothing about the farmer's suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt further away. Nothing about Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, nothing about Posco, about farmer's agitations or the blight of SEZs. He doesn't seem to have a view about the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India.

“He does however support Raj Thackeray's Marathi Manoos xenophobia and has praised the ‘development model’ of Gujarat's Chief Minister who oversaw the 2002 pogrom against Muslims. (Anna withdrew that statement after a public outcry, but presumably not his admiration.)

“Despite the din, sober journalists have gone about doing what journalists do. We now have the back-story about Anna’s old relationship with the RSS. We have heard from Mukul Sharma who has studied Anna’s village community in Ralegan Siddhi, where there have been no Gram Panchayat or Co-operative society elections in the last 25 years. We know about Anna's attitude to ‘harijans’ [Gandhian term for untouchables]: ‘It was Mahatma Gandhi’s vision that every village should have one chamar, one sunar, one kumhar and so on. They should all do their work according to their role and occupation, and in this way, a village will be self-dependent. This is what we are practicing in Ralegan Siddhi.’ Is it surprising that members of Team Anna have also been associated with Youth for Equality, the anti-reservation (pro-‘merit’) movement [that opposes affirmative action on the basis of caste]? The campaign is being handled by people who run a clutch of generously funded NGOs whose donors include Coca-Cola and Lehman Brothers. Kabir, run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, key figures in Team Anna, has received $400,000 from the Ford Foundation in the last three years. Among contributors to the India Against Corruption campaign there are Indian companies and foundations that own aluminum plants, build ports and SEZs, and run Real Estate businesses and are closely connected to politicians who run financial empires that run into thousands of crores of rupees. Some of them are currently being investigated for corruption and other crimes. Why are they all so enthusiastic? [...]

“At a time when the State is withdrawing from its traditional duties and Corporations and NGOs are taking over government functions (water supply, electricity, transport, telecommunication, mining, health, education); at a time when the terrifying power and reach of the corporate owned media is trying to control the public imagination, one would think that these institutions — the corporations, the media, and NGOs — would be included in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill. Instead, the proposed bill leaves them out completely.

“Now, by shouting louder than everyone else, by pushing a campaign that is hammering away at the theme of evil politicians and government corruption, they have very cleverly let themselves off the hook. Worse, by demonising only the Government they have built themselves a pulpit from which to call for the further withdrawal of the State from the public sphere and for a second round of reforms — more privatisation, more access to public infrastructure and India's natural resources. It may not be long before Corporate Corruption is made legal and renamed a Lobbying Fee.”

“Questions were raised about the dangerously authoritarian character of the bill they were backing, with its creation of an unaccountable, unelected body that would have the power to tap phones, intercept emails, and remove every government functionary from the Prime Minister and Chief Justice to the lowest peon. Access to judicial review for those targeted by this all-powerful body would be meaningless, given its power to remove judges it did not like. By defining corruption as the disease rather than seeing it as merely a symptom of a deeper disease–power without accountability, power to commit crimes with impunity–the JLB was a formula to introduce a new source of corruption rather than eliminating it. It was also, potentially, an assault on India’s democratic institutions, one heightened by the demand that either the law should be passed by parliament by August 30, or the government should quit. [...]

“The enthusiastic participation of the RSS and other members of the Sangh Parivar also disturbed many.”

August 07, 2011

“Anti-dalit sentiment erupted in 1991, when the V P Singh government decided to implement 27% reservation for OBCs. In the capital’s “left-leaning” university, JNU, caste clashes took place between students; in the dining-halls of IIT-Delhi, dalits were forced to sit on separate tables, and the walls of urinals in Delhi University were covered with puerile graffiti. And the authorities just watched. ‘The atmosphere in our institutions is very brahminical as the upper castes dominate the faculty. In such an environment, the lower caste students automatically become outcastes,’ says Dilip Mandal, who teaches at Delhi's Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC). [...]

“Many, however, have fought back. Dr Ajay Singh, who joined AIIMS in 2002 with the same marks as the cut-off for "general" students, was the only dalit in his hostel wing. He was barred from entering the carrom-board room and one day someone scrawled ‘Nobody likes you here. F**k off’ on his door. But Dr Singh fought back and that led to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointing a three-member committee, headed by University Grants Commission chairman Sukhdeo Thorat, to look into caste harassment in the country's top medical institutes. The report was shocking: dalit students were bullied into vacating their hostel rooms, leading to a ghetto being formed on two floors of a hostel; they were specifically targeted during ragging; they were not allowed to play cricket and basketball; they were not allowed to eat in the ‘upper-caste mess’; and the teachers ignored them in class, sometimes deliberately failing them in exams. Shamed by the damning report, AIIMS took some remedial steps. ‘Now the hostels are allotted through a lottery system and general harassment has come down a bit, but all the recommendations of the panel are yet to be implemented,‘ says Dr Singh, who now works with a government hospital in Delhi.”

May 08, 2011

“He killed himself in his college library, unable to bear the insults and taunts. The suicide note recovered from his coat pocket charged his Head of the Department (HOD) with deliberately failing him and threatening to fail him over and over. Seven months later, a three-member group of senior professors re-evaluated his answer sheet and found that he had in fact passed the test.

“Medical student Jaspreet Singh, a Dalit by birth, wanted nothing more than to become a doctor. Tragically, he fulfilled his ambition posthumously. A year later, his young sister, a student of Bachelor of Computer Application, also committed suicide, heartbroken at the injustice done to her brother.

“Shocking details about the January 2008 suicide of the Chandigarh-based student have emerged following recent investigations by Insight Foundation, a Dalit-Adivasi student group that has compiled a list of 18 suicides by Dalit students studying in reputed institutions of higher education across India in the past four years. [...]

“The evidence is clinching in this case. Jaspreet's suicide note; a certificate affirming Jaspreet's handwriting from the Directorate of Forensic Science, Ministry of Home Affairs, Shimla; testimonies from Jaspreet's friends; and finally, the re-evaluation of the answer sheet by a three member body of doctors from PGI, Chandigarh.

“All three doctors, Rajesh Kumar, Amarjeet Singh and Arun Kumar Aggrawal, specialised in Community Medicine – the subject in which Jaspreet was failed. Yet till date, no action has been taken against the guilty HOD or the college.”

May 30, 2008

"According to Indian law, the Gujjars – many of whom live in the nearby desert state of Rajasthan – are classified as belonging to the country's second-lowest group, known as Other Backward Classes (OBC).

"In the complex, divisive system this category is one step up from the lowest level known as Scheduled Tribes and Castes (STC) otherwise known as Dalits, or 'Untouchables'.

"The Gujjars say they have been discriminated against in terms of jobs, health care and education – particularly in Rajasthan – but say that by being reclassified as STC they will be eligible for government positions and university places that are reserved for that group."

March 24, 2008

"Hundreds of Tamil families, descendants of those who had sought refuge in the tea and rubber plantations in the Aryankavu-Thenmala belt on the western fringe of Kollam district
during the pre-Independence era, are being denied caste certificate for the last two years and are, thus, shut out of education, jobs and land and housing schemes for the poor.

"To get a certificate, they are now being asked to produce documents to show that their ancestors had settled in the state before 1950. But the plantations, the only places where such records could be found, have lost them."

"Coming down heavily on those who secure admission to professional courses through forged SC/ST certificates, the Supreme Court has warned that the erring student is liable to be stripped of the degree."

January 26, 2008

"The petitioner said though Hindu Khatiks (those who slaughter animals) were included in the SC category, the Muslim Khatiks were not, despite being in the same social strata and facing similar discrimination. Muslim Khatiks are generally considered as 'Ajlaf' (the base strata of society), it said."

May 26, 2006

"For a snapshot of the social importance of caste in modern India, you just need to turn to the matrimonials section of any daily paper. A small minority of the advertisements declare CASTE NO BAR, but most are arranged according to caste groupings, and go along the lines of: 'Engineer with multinational corp. seeks beautiful girl from decent Brahmin family.' Sociologists estimate that more than 90 percent of people marry within their caste."

May 17, 2006

"The protests have disrupted hospital services across northern India, with the student shutdown supported by doctors. In Delhi television crews filmed babies being refused medical treatment because of a lack of staff."

April 20, 2006

A minister in the Indian government has proposed a bill that would more than double the reservation quota (number of seats reserved for students oppressed by caste) in elite higher educational institutions run by the central government. He wants to add a reservation for the Other Backward Castes (castes considered low but not untouchable) to the existing one for untouchables and tribals. What is the 49.5% quota all about? (rediff.com, April 12, 2006) explains the plan in some detail.

The anti-reservations slogan "Save Merit" really means "Save Caste Privilege." Praful Bidwai in In Defence of OBC Reservations (The Nahvind Times, April 20, 2006) punctures the hypocrisy of those who take it up:

"Those who oppose affirmative action radically, in principle, on the ground that it’s anti-merit, are comprehensively wrong in assuming that our society and government run on the basis of merit, as distinct from social status, clan loyalties, wealth, sifarish, political influence, overt bribery, etc. Even the best of our competition examinations don’t accurately assess merit. Take the case of the IITs, where admissions are dominated by candidates from privileged families who can afford to send them to the coaching centres of Kota in Rajasthan for long months at the expense of lakhs of rupees."

In What Mandal Really Wanted (Outlook India, April 14, 2006) S.S. Gill, the secretary of the Mandal Commission, defends that commission's 1980 report. When its recommendation that reservations be extended to Other Backward Castes was finally put into practice in 1989, it provoked a vicious casteist reaction nationwide. In response to what is now being proposed, Gill asks, "Why do we still require the crutch of reservations to enable students from the deprived sections to stand on their feet even 60 years after Independence? What has happened to the tall claims of affirmative action aimed at raising the educational and economic standards of the SCs, STs and OBCs, so that their children are able to compete on their own merit?"

But even the minimal reforms he says are necessary are utopian in a capitalist India dominated by imperialism. And, while it's important to defend any gains for the oppressed including reservations, why shouldn't everyone be able to get a decent education and a good job?

See also:

How Sharad Got A Life: "As did Amit, Risha, Parag and many like them. Quotas empowered them to take on challenges. Here's their side of the story." (Outlook India, April 24, 2006)

photo: young doctors protest the extension of reservations with signs "Youth for Equality" and "Arjun Singh Wants Another Rajeev Goswami" (a brahmin university student who tried to immolate himself as part of a similar campaign in 1990)—via creativepraveen's photostream